The world at our feet

Some time back, I read a book by John Carlin entitled ‘Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game that changed a Nation’. Post-apartheid South Africa hosted the 1995 Rugby World Cup. The book is about the events in South Africa before and during the 1995 Rugby World Cup. In the apartheid era, the Blacks played football while the Whites played rugby. The book is about how Nelson Mandela with the vision of a leader used the Rugby World Cup to unite his country…

India hosted the Cricket World Cup 2011. One of my friends happened to be in Mumbai during the last week-end when India was playing the finals against Sri Lanka. When he was relating his experience to me, I could not help but make a mental comparison of the two events. The moment, as he describes it, was simply magical. Everybody was united behind this one theme: Cricket.

You get into a taxi and the taxi driver talks cricket; you go shopping, people in the shops are talking cricket; you go to the temple and people are praying for India to win…

Cricket is a bat-and-bowl team sport. A cricket match is played between two teams of 11 players each. By the end of the 18th century, cricket had become the national sport of England. The expansion of the British Empire led to cricket being played overseas. Indeed, cricket is very popular in Commonwealth countries. Probably because of its French background, cricket never took on in Mauritius. Mauritians get to know about the sport when studying in the Commonwealth countries, through movies and now more and more from satellite TV news channels

The unifying factor in sports is visible. Be it the Olympic Games or the World Cup, sports have helped unite the world. Sports is not just about winning or losing, it transcends the boundaries of race and religion and brings unity. If we needed a reason to boost up sports in Mauritius, here is one. This is exactly what we need for a nation as diverse as ours. We talk about unity in diversity but is our nation really united? Mind you, by sports, I do not mean betting on football matches but sharing a common passion as used to be the case in the good old days…